Two winners for Vlerick Award

Hein Deprez of Univeg and Gabriel Fehervari of Alfacam are the winners of the Vlerick Award 2008. The Vlerick Award honours a Belgian entrepreneur who has by means of sustained results developed his company internationally to become a leader in the sector. During the gala show in the Kursaal Oostende, two of the nominees obtained the same result after the online voting & the audience voting and hence won the award. It was for the first time in eight editions that the Vlerick Award had two winners.

Hein Deprez (Univeg)

Hein Deprez (Wilrijk, 1961) is CEO of the UNIVEG group. Starting out with a mushroom farm in the Waasland area, he went on to build up a veritable private multinational in a period of twenty years. In the market of fruit and vegetables, UNIVEG can more than hold their own with the big groups such as Dole, Chiquita and Del Monte. Today the UNIVEG group consists of 4 business units: fruit & vegetables, flowers & plants, convenience and logistics & transport. The group comprises around one hundred businesses, collectively achieving a turnover of 2.2 billion Euros with around 8,000 employees. The UNIVEG group is active in 23 countries on 3 continents. During the last three years Deprez has increased the turnover fivefold by a number of targeted takeovers. The one that caught the attention most was the acquisition of the French Kapoté, good for a turnover of 230 million Euros. Since 2005 Deprez has also been a reference shareholder in the Pinguin group, a company quoted on the stock exchange, with 1,200 employees and a turnover of 450 million Euros. Via Pinguin he took over the well-known potato processing business Lutosa in June 2007.

Gabriel Fehervari (Alfacam)

Gabriel Fehervari (Wilrijk, 1960) is CEO of the Alfacam Group. In 1985 Gabriel Fehervari started a video business in Antwerp.  His first multi-camera assignment was to take video images of the first edition of The Night of the Proms in the Sportpaleis in Antwerp. Since then Alfacam has continued to push out his frontiers. Alfacam grew in 22 years into a group of 3 companies: Alfacam (multimedia television services), Euro1080 (tv channels in high definition, such as the culture channel EXQI) and Eurolinx (wireless tv services). All these services are housed in the Eurocam Media Center in Lint. The Media Center today has 11 recording studios, including the biggest in the Benelux. Every year Alfacam provides television and recording facilities for more than 1,800 productions by channels and production companies all over the world. The organisation has three external support points: Alfacam France SAS is based in Marseille and provides services to the French, Spanish and Monegasque markets. Alfacam Deutschland in Munich focuses on the German-speaking regions. End February 2008 a third arm was started up, namely Alfacam Italia. Alfacam is recognized as setting the trend in HDTV, the high-quality television signal of the future. In 2006 Alfacam achieved a turnover of 27.96 million Euros. The figures for 2007 were not yet available when this press release was issued.